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Blacklists and Spam Reporting Services are our Friends

By Kevin Huxham on August 27th, 2009

Today, I wanted to talk about blacklists and spam reporting services, also what you can do if you’ve been listed.

First off, a lot of people think blacklists are the bad guys, when in fact it’s the exact opposite. The feedback they provide is not only valuable to help ISPs keep spam out of your Inbox, but they can also alert you (the sender) to potential problems as well. You should think of it like your child’s report card in school, if your child fails a class wouldn’t you want to know about it so you can help them?

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Yahoo or Hotmail use these services to help determine if the email you are sending them is Spam. If they receive spam from you or too many people complain, they will send your email to ‘Junk’ or just delete it. These services let you know if anyone on your list did not remember signing up and/or they are not happy receiving your emails anymore (perhaps because they requested to be removed). All of this helps protect your delivery and allows you to judge the quality of the list so you can take action.

What Can I do?

If you have been listed, you first need to look at your mailing list (or segment) and decide whether or not it is still worth using. Strengthen your sign-up process and make sure it’s crystal clear. If you have no relationship with the people on your list, or you are using a publicly available or purchased list – it should be discarded. If the list is legitimate and made up of people who have opted in to receive your email from you directly, then perhaps it is time to reconfirm they want to stay on your list. If the list is old, or you haven’t used it in a while (+6 months), or people are no longer interested in receiving your email – the list should be “cleaned”. This is done by sending an email asking if they want to keep receiving emails from you. If they do not reply, they should be removed. You can also put a link in the email asking them to click if they want to stay on your list or better yet, visit your website to sign up again! The people who are left would remain and anyone that didn’t reply or click should be removed. Depending on how often you send emails and how big your list is, this should be done every few months.

Bye for now,

Kevin

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Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? - Part 3: List Cleaning 101 and Hardbounces

By Kevin Huxham on May 4th, 2009

Previous posts:
Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? - Part 1: The Risks
Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? - Part 2: Prepare your Re-Opt in Email

Hi again, in my last post we talked a bit about reviving old lists and dealing with hardbounces, but I never really got into how important they are. Sure, most people know what a hardbounce is, but I don’t think many people know what kind of an impact sending to them can have on your deliverability.

Very simply a hardbounce is a bounce generated when you send an email to an address that does not exist. It may have existed in the past, but not anymore. Just like calling a phone number that’s been disconnected, you usually get a recording saying “This number is no longer in service..” – which is effectively the same thing. The big difference is, the phone company doesn’t block the rest of your outbound phone calls because you dialed too many wrong numbers!

ISPs look very closely at the number of hardbounces a sender generates. Too many from a given network can indicate a potential Directory Harvest Attack and ISPs will put up a block (usually done automatically) to prevent slow downs which may cause further harm to their users. Have you ever sent an email to a friend and wondered why it took so long to get there? Think about it, if an ISP is being bombarded by millions of spammers trying to validate a list of a ‘gagillion’ addresses, it’s going to slow down the legitimate email from getting through and people will inevitably start complaining.

In order to prevent these blocks, it’s very important to keep your list(s) up-to-date. This means sending on a regular basis and removing hardbounces as you go. CakeMail automatically does this for you, but if you haven’t used the list in a while or like we talked about last week, you’re thinking of using an older list, you need to be very careful. As a preventative measure, which we’ve also mentioned several times, you should be confirming any new leads. When somebody signs-up, you should (at the very least) be sending that address a Welcome email. Not only will this prove they have access to the address, but it will get rid of hardbounces right away and prevent you sending a whole bunch at once. It also gives you an excellent opportunity to send them your From address for Whitelisting and thank them for signing up in the first place!

Bye for now,

Kevin

If you have any questions, Kevin can be reached at: postmaster@cakemail.com or feel free to use our Help Desk.

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10 Email Marketing Resolutions to Improve your Life

By Isabel Lapointe on May 1st, 2009

Note: this blogpost was originally published on January 5 2009.

We know you’ve already planned to lose weight, quit smoking, and start exercising to improve your quality of life. And we don’t want to overwhelm you with MORE resolutions but simply having better email marketing practices can diminish your complaint rate and improve your deliverability, lowering your stress level and making your life in general better! Aren’t we thoughtful? ;-)

  1. Emails are nothing without the appropriate permissions. Go for double opt-in.
  2. Should we really tell you once more to NOT buy lists?
  3. Keep your lists as up-to-date as possible. Delete all problem addresses and react quickly to unsubscribe requests.
  4. Avoid using lists you haven’t used for more than a year. If you’ve stopped using a list for several months, it’s a good idea to send a request to subscribers, reconfirming their subscription prior to any other sending.
  5. In the subscription process clearly explain what your users will receive and when. And allow your subscribers to unsubscribe easily.
  6. Email subjects must be as clear as possible. Don’t take the chance of getting mixed up with spam. And picking an attractive subject line will make your readers eager to open your email.
  7. In your emails have a clear sender name and address, and always use the same ones.
  8. Ask your subscribers to add your email address to their contact list so you won’t end up in their spam box.
  9. Respect your users and the rules you agreed to when they subscribed to your email. Go further than the rules set up by the CAN-SPAM Act, or at least respect them.
  10. Make good content! No one will complaint about receiving interesting content.

Whitelisting 101 on CakeMail and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group - MAAWG Senders Communications Practices Guide (PDF download) will help you keep your resolutions.

Have a great, successful and healthy year in 2009!

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Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? - Part 2: Prepare your Re-Opt in Email

By Kevin Huxham on May 1st, 2009

Previous post: Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? - Part 1: The Risks

Here’s some good advice when preparing your re-opt in email:

  • As with any email, make sure to have the clearest “FROM” possible so they can always identify you
  • Be sure your “OBJECT”/”SUBJECT” is clear and doesn’t look like spam
  • Reconfirmation emails should not contain advertising content of any kind
  • Tell them precisely how you got their email address, so they understand they had previously subscribed
  • Give them precise information about the type of content you will send them and the frequency of mailings they will receive. Informing you subscribers is also a good idea when you make any changes to the type of content or frequency of your mailings, or to your company name, website, logo, etc.
  • Be able to fulfill your promises before you ask people to subscribe
  • Make them want to sign up! Create emails that are as ‘attractive’ as possible to get them interested in subscribing
  • Be clear that you are updating your list, and that they will need to “Subscribe to your newsletter” by clicking on a link. If they don’t do this, they won’t receive anything from you.
  • Add some links to your Privacy and Anti-Spam policiess
  • Give yourself some time to receive your subscriptions. You can add the date of the first mailing in the email so they know how much time they have to register if they want to receive it. Late responses will be subscribed to future mailings
  • Don’t be discouraged if you don’t receive much feedback from your users. It’s a good idea to couple your move with a ‘subscription campaign’ on your website to reinforce the interest in subscribing;
  • Discuss this process with your ISP. We at CakeMail will help you plan your mailing and also discuss with ISPs to ensure you won’t have any problems

If you have any questions, Kevin can be reached at: postmaster@cakemail.com or feel free to use our Help Desk.

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Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? - Part 1: The Risks

By Kevin Huxham on May 1st, 2009

Nowadays people are really trying to get the most out of their email campaigns. This sometimes means going back and using lists you haven’t touched in a while. This can often do more harm than good, so watch out!

Let’s say you haven’t sent any email to your subscribers for a while - about 6 months - and you have now decided to start a weekly newsletter in order to share your coveted knowledge, making your subscribers very happy. You prepare it carefully and send a few tests. Then suddenly you think: “Wait, maybe it would be a good idea to (re)confirm their permission first”. Phew!

This is actually the best move you could make. Sending content to subscribers who haven’t received anything from you in over 6 months is the best way to get into some serious deliverability problems. Chances are they won’t remember ever signing up and hit the ’Spam’ button before you even have a chance to communicate with them. The next thing you know, even people who signed up yesterday aren’t getting your email, or the email is ending up in their Junk folder.

Using old lists increases the risk of you sending to Spamtraps and getting your Domain and/or IP blacklisted. After email addresses have been deactivated for a while, ISPs sometimes use them as bait to catch people using old lists. If you had been sending to this list regularly, these traps would have hardbounced a long time ago and would no longer be on your list. The best way to regain contact with those on older lists is to send a message asking for permission to contact them again and have them re-opt in to your list. Of course, using 6months as a general timeline is a good place to start - the older the list, the bigger the risk that your subscribers won’t remember having subscribed. It’s important to understand that the further you go back, the more likely you are to run into trouble. Realistically, if you haven’t contacted these people at all in the last year, they should no longer be considered part of your list.

If you have any questions, Kevin can be reached at: postmaster@cakemail.com or feel free to use our Help Desk.

Next time: Thinking of Using an ‘Old’ List? - Part 2: Prepare your Re-Opt in Email

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